Department of Animal and Plant Sciences, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, United Kingdom
James P. J. Hall
Department of Evolution, Ecology and Behaviour, Institute of Infection, Veterinary and Ecological Sciences, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, United Kingdom
Bacterial genomes often contain multiple coexisting plasmids that provide important functions like antibiotic resistance. Using lab experiments, we show that such plasmid coexistence within a genome is stable only in environments where the function they encode is useless but is unstable if the function is useful and beneficial for bacterial fitness.
